Documents - UC Systemwide Academic Senate and Office of the President
The systemwide committees for the University of California and their roles..
Includes Office of the President plans for the use of diversity statements on each campus
Require, as part of the appointment case, a written assessment of the proposed faculty hire’s awareness, record, and future plans to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Note the directive to require DEI statements in merits and promotions, as well as appointments:
Campuses should implement, within two years, the use of DEl statements consistent with each campus’s use of research, teaching, and service statements in academic review.
Despite the fundamental changes being proposed in the hiring and promotion system, there was little consultation of the divisional Academic Senates before the Council endorsed these recommendations. Faculty across the UC system have been surprised to see a basic change in procedures emerge in their faculty search processes with no prior discussion.
In December 2014, after the Academic Council declined to endorse revisions to APM 210-1-d originally proposed by UCAP and UCAAD in 2013, Senate Chair Mary Gilly charged a work group consisting of the chairs of BOARS, UCAAD, UCAP, UCEP, and the UCSD division, to discuss improvements to the wording based on the systemwide Senate responses to the review.
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The work group focused its attention on broad agreement by reviewers that faculty efforts in promoting equal opportunity and diversity should be evaluated and credited on the same basis as other contributions, but should not be understood to constitute a “fourth leg” of evaluation, along with research, teaching, and service; and should not receive more credit than others simply on the basis of their subject matter.
Despite this agreement, DEI statements are not only being used in many faculty job searches as a "fourth leg", but even more as a primary screen for all applicants.
Emerging from the dismal days of the UC Loyalty Oaths, Regents Standing Order 101.1d states that
No political test shall ever be considered in the appointment and promotion of any
faculty member or employee.
There is an overwhelming case that the rubrics to evaluate DEI statements constitute a political test.
The Academic Council adopts final language for the APM revisions that specifies that it does not want a new criterion alongside existing criteria of research, teaching and public service:
Council believes that a parallel pattern of word usage within the passage will help avoid implying a change in standards or criteria, when no such change is intended.
See for example the accompanying text on reasons for the revisions, such as the following from UCSF CAP:
As previously written, it suggested faculty might selectively pursue students and faculty from underrepresented and underserved populations in order to mentor them – in attempts to receive more credit in the academic personnel process. This may have the unintended consequence of potentially excluding other students or faculty from mentoring or advising who didn’t fit such criteria.
and from UCSC:
The Santa Cruz Division supports the proposed revisions and finds the latest revision preferable to previous versions as it clarifies the view that contributions to equal opportunity and diversity in all areas of faculty achievement should be recognized in the academic personnel review process without creating a fourth category of evaluation.
An extensive discussion occurred at the systemwide level regarding modifications to the APM to recognize contributions to diversity. See the discussion below of a sentence removed from a preliminary draft:
The chief objections were to the third sentence of the revision, which states that contributions to equal opportunity and diversity “should be given the same weight in the evaluation of the candidate’s qualifications during Academic Personnel actions as any other contributions in these areas.” According to Davis, for example, this sentence “appears to suggest that a fourth category of evaluation is to be initiated,” while the San Diego CAP saw the sentence as implying “that contributions to diversity are in fact necessary to a complete file and hence that a file without them will be assessed as having weaknesses.”